Giggly baby

Progress reports

Geneva: She's discovered her feet and loves to grab them and stick them in her mouth when we're trying to change her. She has a little tooth that's finally poking above the gums and has become even sweeter since it finally popped through. She figured out what her exersaucer is for and is now spending lots of time in it and learning to stand supported.

Garden: The pea plants are making peas! And then the plants got totally huge, blew over, and got kinked stems. We'll see how that affects pea production, but for the future, the pea forest needs to be well supported. I also dug up a new section of our side yard, sorted out a bunch of the bigger rocks with a rock shaker that Chris made me, and I'll be planting sunflowers out there sometime soon.

Kitties and Chris: Still staying home. Still cute. :)

Work: Very busy. Today I talked with Chris around 11 and he said he was bringing me lunch at noon. And then I feel like I blinked 3 times and he was sending me a text saying he was there! Where did that time go?? It's been working really well for me to have him bring me lunch and I feed the baby at the same time. I hope it'll work out for me to go see her at lunch even when she's in daycare.

Other: We ordered a car this weekend! But it won't be in for 10 weeks. Boo.

With Aunt Jen

I love the toupee effect of Jen's hair on the baby's head. Ha.

At home with Daddy

I begged for a photo today and Chris sent me this one. She's so cute!
He took her to the mall yesterday to get out of the heat and said he
was stopped over and over by people who wanted to tell him how cute
she is. I think it helps that she saves her biggest smiles for total
strangers. I wonder if we really have an abnormally cute baby or if
people are like this with all babies. I tend to believe ours is
abnormally cute. Hehe

Beets and kumquats

So today is my last day of pseudo-vacation. I've been off all of last week on furlough, which has been nice since my sister was in town and we got to spend a lot of time together. We went to San Francisco and saw fabric stores and ate yummy food (Millennium and Japantown). We watched movies. She read the entire Twilight series (in 6 days... that must be some kind of record). The baby was cute... she's started rolling over back to front very regularly and sometimes front to back also. I think today she started reaching for me for the first time. I'm not totally sure whether she's reaching for me to grab ahold of me or reaching for me because she wants me to hold her, but either way it's pretty cute.

The title of my post refers to two foods which I've started eating recently. Kumquats are these tiny little citruses and you eat the entire thing, peel and everything and they're so sour that my face wants to implode. The beets are even more exciting - I feel like being vegetarian seriously limits the foods I can eat (duh). If I didn't feel so strongly that animals are just not food, I might be more tempted to revert to eating them just for more variety. Which means that when I discover there is a food I really enjoy that I didn't know about before, I feel like I got this amazing gift! Anyway, they're in season so a lot of restaurants around here are serving them, but I've also learned to prepare them myself by grating them and then frying them in butter. Yum. I've even converted a few folks who didn't think they liked beets... it must be in large part about the preparation. I doubt I would enjoy beets from a can even now. In other vegetable related news, my marigolds, tomatoes, and sugar snap peas are all blooming. Fun!

Fambly Pitchur

Baby blue eyes

Easter brunch

With Steph's help we used our nice china for Easter brunch. Only a few
of the pieces, but it was nice to get it out of storage. Thanks
Grandma Jean!

Birthday cake

Aunt Steph thinks the baby looks like a cake!

Easter Brunch

We have a lovely Easter brunch with friends today. I grabbed Matt & Anne's camera and snapped some really cute ones of the baby. You can see the whole album here if you want.

My mom playing Wii Rockband

Steph in the Tesla Model S

Steph's new best friend

Steph visits the Tesla mothership

Sucking her fingers

In the bath

Up at the crack of dawn...

...and playing with photobooth. Yee haw

Knitting

I don't think I've posted much about my knitting recently so here's some finished objects from the last several months. Actually, I just looked back and I've hardly posted anything all year, so this is a major catchup.

First, I made a lace shawl for my mom and it took most of last year. Well, ok, not exactly, but it took many months. But I worked on other projects at the same time because when she came to visit I didn't want her to see.


I gave my sister queue jumping privileges because she's made me so many beautiful things. When she asked for a specific hat for Grant I dropped everything and made this for him:


I made these jaywalker socks and sent them to Jill. Since she's also a knitter I knew she would appreciate them and I haven't sent her a birthday present in 10 years or something, so it was about time.


Then I realized baby Noa needed a cute sweater, so I made him the baby surprise jacket:


Next I worked for a long time on these knee highs that I thought would be really cool and they were taking forever and didn't really fit anyway so I put them aside with the intent to rip them out and use the yarn for something else. Chris thinks I may change my mind though so they're staying on the needles for awhile just in case. Here's how far I got with those:


Then I made some socks and sent them to Aunt Teresa. She's also a knitter and I have a really nice jacket she made, so it was about time for her to get some knitting too:


I am also mostly finished with a toy teddy bear and I've started on a sweater that I've had the yarn for for ages. I'll wait until I'm finished to post those though.

Spring garden

Here's my happy garden! The big plants on the right are sugar snap peas, back right are tomatoes. Broccoli raab is down the centerline of the box, cilantro and dill down the second line from the left, and salad greens and a few remaining radishes on the far left line. The patio table is shading some recently transplanted basil and peppers because they were looking sunburned. I was worried about the basil but actually it looks like I have some basil volunteers in other parts of the garden, so I'm pretty sure to have some kind of basil.

Thanks Aunt Steph!

No to zealotry

A friend sent me some great links after that last post regarding formula vs. breast feeding. I should preface this discussion for those who don't know, by saying there's whole schools of thought which basically think of baby formula as rat poison and therefore many mothers feel extremely guilty giving their babies formula, regardless of their reasons. (I tend to not let myself be too bullied into such feelings, but I can't say I haven't felt a twinge...)

First we have The Case Against Breastfeeding from The Atlantic, which argues that there's no proven good reason for breast feeding. Furthermore, given that there's nothing that special about breast feeding (medically speaking), by looking down our noses at mothers who don't do it we're basically undoing the good of the feminist movement which said we should be able to do what we want with our bodies.

We have Ban The Breast Pump from the New York Times. This one found the word I was looking for in my previous post: using a breast pump feels undignified. She uses the previous article to make her claim that the breast pump should be banned (and I think she was trying to be light-hearted but instead ends up sounding hypocritical and like she didn't get the point of the first article).

Finally, a New York Times commenter provided a link to an actual medical article that reviewed a bunch of other articles and claims that there is medical reasons you should breast feed.

My opinion on this subject is much as it was for the "natural birth" subject. Use common sense: try to breast feed if you can, if you can't, no big deal. Down with zealotry! Try to put more love in the world, not less!

First week back

Well, we all survived my first week back at work. Chris has been at home with Geneva and that seems to be going pretty well. He's certainly getting much faster at the preparation of bottles since she often screams at him the whole time he's doing it. Talk about grace under pressure. He's been meeting me for lunch so I can feed her every day which is awfully nice. I like getting to see her and avoiding one session of pumping every day. I have to say I'm not a huge fan of the pump. It's not super comfortable and it's almost... I want to say demeaning? to use. It can't really be demeaning because no one sees me do it and no one is making me do it, yet I sit alone in the mother's room at work (a converted office, isn't that nice?) and I'm a little (just a little) embarrassed to be there.

Anyway, to relieve pressure on me regarding how much milk I might or might not be making, we started giving Geneva a little formula this week and she seems to have no problem with it. I gave her some last night before I went to bed in the hopes that a fuller tummy would make her sleep even longer through the night, but no beef - I was still up with her at 4:30. (I know some people have it much worse than me, but that doesn't mean I don't want something even better than I have...)

Work itself is just like it was before. I was worried that re-starting would be like when I started the first time but it's not the same at all. I know the system and my work and instead of it taking months for me to make a valuable contribution, I am pretty sure I'll be able to do it within a week. By coincidence one of the larger projects I was working on previously got put on hold for the majority of the time I was gone, so I'm picking up now exactly where I left off. Very convenient to not have gotten behind!

I think I'm a better engineer than I am a babysitter. Now when I get home from work I feel so happy to see Geneva and play with her, whereas when I was home with her all the time I often just wanted her to take longer naps so I could have a little time to myself.

Carrot harvest

I wanted the space in my garden for something else so I harvested a bunch of carrots that a planted last May. They're pretty mediocre carrots I would say but there's still some pride to having grown them myself.

First day home with daddy

Chris just sent me this photo of Geneva near the end of her first day
home with daddy. Looks like it's going pretty well! Of course this means I was at work today for my first time in four months. It was a little like your first day of classes - they give you the syllabus and tell you how much work your next semester is going to be, but don't hit you too hard right away.